As there has been growing public awareness of global environmental protection in recent years, improvement in environmental safety has been required in the photographic processing field also. One approach to this requirement in the photographic industry is through an effort to control the discharge of waste photographic processing solutions to the reduction limit of environmental load. Another approach is through the removal or control of formaldehyde used at the step of using a stabilization bath for the purpose of ensuring environmental safety. And the arts relating to the individual purposes have been introduced.
With respect to the use of formaldehyde substitutes for removal of formaldehyde from a rinsing solution or reduction of formaldehyde concentration in a rinsing solution, for instance, the rinsing or stabilizing solution using hexamethylenetetramine is proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 295864/1999, and those using hydroxybenzaldehyde and hexamethylenetetramine derivatives are proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-98567.
In addition to formaldehyde, concerns has been pointed out lately that nonylphenoxypoly(ethyleneoxy) compounds acting as surfactants for draining water off the stabilizing bath impair the safety of a living environment in conjunction with physiological metabolism disturbing substances. Therefore, it has been desired to use those compounds in reduced amounts, preferably to use alternative surface tension reducing compounds whose environmental safety is confirmed. For instance, the use of 4-halophenol derivatives as the alternatives is proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 174646/1999.
However, a new problem was found that the processing of color photographic materials with an environmental safety-supported rinsing solution free of nonylphenoxy-poly(ethyleneoxy) compounds and containing a formaldehyde substitute gave rise to milky turbidity, deformation, embrittlement and cracking in the rubber and plastic materials used as piping hose materials and valve sealing materials of an automatic processor; as a result, leaks of the rinsing solution and drop in replenishing accuracy tended to occur.
Further, shop laboratories (mini laboratories), or camera shops having a compact automatic processor installed near the entrances thereof and carrying out processing of photographic materials, have proliferated in recent years for the purposes of supporting the need for speeding up services to general users, especially the need for making photo prints from digital cameras, and rationalizing the pickup, delivery and transport operations performed on both camera shop side and laboratory side. As speedy services to customers are important to shop laboratories, the demand for reduction in development time has grown, especially in silver-salt photography. Therefore, rapid processing, or reduction in processing time, has come to be performed by heightening the concentrations of processing solutions and/or processing temperatures.
It has also been recognized that, when the rapid processing under a condition of high concentration and/or high temperature was performed by use of the rinsing solution free of both formaldehyde and nonylphenoxy compounds, automatic processor members were considerably susceptible to degradation.
Accordingly, it has been desired to solve the aforementioned problem by offering a rinsing solution to which measures to environmental safety have been introduced and, at the same time, which has been prevented from causing troubles in the processor.